Sierra Nevada Chairman of the Board Eren Ozmen has announced that SNC has signed an agreement to acquire SpaceDev. Under the agreement, SNC seeks to acquire the outstanding equity of SpaceDev for the gross purchase price of $38 million, which after certain deductions is expected to result in a net price of between $0.68 and $0.72 per share to holders of SpaceDev common stock.
The expected price represents a premium of between 42 and 50 percent over the average closing price of SpaceDev's common stock over the 30 trading days preceding this announcement. The acquisition has been approved by SpaceDev's Board of Directors and will be presented to SpaceDev stockholders for a vote in December.
"The acquisition of SpaceDev, which has a tremendous space heritage with products that have flown on 250 spacecraft, represents a dynamic expansion of SNC's space technology capabilities, proven system integration, communications, networking and intelligence capabilities in the space sector," said Fatih Ozmen, Chief Executive Officer of SNC.
"We believe that combining SpaceDev's unique technological offerings, manufacturing capabilities and talented team with our existing space business and technology base will allow us to significantly increase our capacity and scalability while better serving our customers and making us a leader in space technology with access to a much wider customer and technology base."
SNC expects to form an integrated space technologies unit with this SpaceDev acquisition, SNC's subsidiary, MicroSat Systems, and the other SNC space operations and capabilities that will provide advanced satellite systems, propulsion systems, space vehicle systems and a wide array of subsystems and components to defense, civil government, and corporate customers.
"This is an exciting and positive step for us and our shareholders," said Mark N. Sirangelo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SpaceDev.
"There are significant synergies between SNC and SpaceDev and we believe that our combined space products will be well received by the emerging space markets. We expect our employees and customers to greatly benefit in the future from this acquisition. My team and I look forward to working with the outstanding management and staff of SNC."
